Electrical connectors are utilized in electrical instrumentation to connect together the multiplicity of wires carrying electrical power and signals within and between different electrical instruments making up the system or systems. For example, in the aerospace field, as electronic systems become more and more complex, the systems are miniaturized to minimize their weight and size. Hence the electrical connectors interconnecting the systems must also be reduced in size. In some instances electrical connectors may carry hundreds of electrical contacts to interconnect hundreds of wires. Each of the contacts and wires associated with such a connector is quite small (about 1/2 inch long with a diameter of about 0.029 inches).
Some connectors provide for rear insertion and release of electrical contacts while others provide for front insertion and release of electrical contacts. Examples of a prior art electrical connector having insertable and removable contacts may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,165,369 entitled "Retention System for Electrical Contacts" issued Jan. 12, 1966 to J. W. Maston; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,221,292 entitled "Electrical Connector" and issued Nov. 30, 1965 to G. J. Swanson et al.
For many years connector manufacturers have been improving and developing means to retain electrical contacts in the electrical connector so that they may be easily inserted and removed with little or no dislocation of the contacts on insertion, removal and mating. For example, the U.S. patents of Bourdon et al 4,082,398 issued Apr. 4, 1978 and Bourdon et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,157,806 issued June 12, 1979, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference, disclose electrical inserts for retaining a plurality of electrical contacts in an electrical connector having a plurality of radially deflectable contact-retaining fingers.
While there have been many efforts to improve and develop means to retain electrical contacts in the electrical connector, little effort has been exerted to discover ways for more efficiently and economically inserting the electrical contacts into the electrical connector. The only known prior method of inserting electrical contacts into connectors was to insert such electrical contacts manually as shown in FIGS. 6 through 8 of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,082,398. In another known system the electrical contacts are loaded into a transfer block unit which in turn may be used to position the electrical contacts above the cavities formed in the connector after which the electrical contacts are individually inserted by hand. Oftentimes such manually inserted electrical contacts do not obtain a positive seat in their respective retention systems within the connector. Because such insertion is done manually, the time required to assemble a completed connector assembly is great and therefore, the assembly operation is costly.